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Xixi

2,585 karmajoined 19 years ago
Software engineer living in Kyoto. You can contact me here: alexis dot tabary at gmail.com

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Steward-Ownership

en.wikipedia.org
1 points·by Xixi·7 months ago·0 comments

comments

Xixi
·2 days ago·discuss
Static types are not _that_ useful to catch bugs, if only because type related bugs tend to surface very quickly, especially in strongly typed language like Python. So a good CI suite is usually enough to catch them, but you do need good coverage. Even if they make it to prod, they won't survive long...

Static types are IMHO more useful for speed, maintenance/refactoring of large projects, and code completion in IDEs. But a codebase in production is unlikely to have much type related bugs...
Xixi
·2 days ago·discuss
There's been a pendulum swing of sort during my career: static languages like C++/Java, then dynamic ones like Python/Ruby/JavaScript, and now back toward typed languages like TypeScript/Rust/Swift.

My read is that people were never really against types: they were against type systems that got in the way. Older ones often weren't expressive enough, so you ended up writing verbose patterns just to appease the compiler.

That's why dynamic languages gave startups a sizable velocity edge for a while. Modern type systems (with optionals, unions/sum types, inference, etc.) are completely different.

To paraphrase a comment I once read here on Hacker News: I'll take static typing with sum types over dynamic typing, but I'll take dynamic typing over static typing without sum types...
Xixi
·3 days ago·discuss
An expat is someone living outside (ex) of their homeland (patria, technically fatherland rather than homeland if we are pedantic). All immigrants and non-immigrants [1] are expats, by definition, no matter the connotation some people have decided to give the word.

[1] Non-immigrant is the administrative word used by the United States to designate people that are supposed to leave the country rather than settle in the US, usually on training/work/investor visas.
Xixi
·9 days ago·discuss
Jet engines are far more high-tech than most people imagine, but I'm not convinced this is evidence of some inherent Chinese weakness. The obvious explanation is that China started much later in an insanely difficult field.

They are narrowing a gap measured in decades. The article explains the difficulty well, but it doesn't convince me that China can't eventually (again, given enough time) build good engines, especially for domestic military use.

Same for semi-conductors, IMHO.
Xixi
·14 days ago·discuss
PACs and super PACs are the key difference. Lobbying in the US includes practices that would fall squarely into the definition of corruption in many other Western countries.

There's nothing inherently wrong with people or groups talking to representatives and advocating for their interests, even in an organized way. The problem is when it gets closer to: "Pass this law or regulation, and we'll put $USD_AMOUNT into your PAC".
Xixi
·23 days ago·discuss
That sounds more like FIRE / geographic arbitrage than expat in the traditional sense.

What people often mean by a "true expat" is something completely different: someone sent abroad by their employer, usually with a generous expatriate package (home-country salary, local allowances, housing, private schooling for children, etc.)

More broadly, though, expatriate simply means someone living outside their native country. Ex means "out of", and patria means "native country" or "homeland". It's that simple.

So the word itself isn't limited to wealthy retirees or corporate transfers. All immigrants are expatriates, although not every expatriate is necessarily an immigrant.
Xixi
·last month·discuss
I stand corrected, I was not aware of the full mechanism, and I was still stuck at the proposed multiplier and not the actual one.
Xixi
·last month·discuss
Nasdaq "solved" that problem by including a 5x float multiplier for stocks with less than 20% of shares available to the public...
Xixi
·3 months ago·discuss
I understand the desire to end that murderous regime. If I were Iranian, I'd want to see it ended too. But do they really think bombs will achieve that? More importantly, would more bombing actually bring the regime down?

Regimes rarely fall because civilians are reduced to searching for food and water. Destroying Iran's infrastructure would be more likely to produce desperation and disorder than revolt. It would hurt the weakest most, not those closest to the regime and best positioned to shield themselves from scarcity.

If outsiders want to help bring the regime down, supporting opposition forces would at least make more sense than bombing civilians into misery.

This is where not betraying the Kurds (several times) would have come in handy...
Xixi
·3 months ago·discuss
[dead]
Xixi
·3 months ago·discuss
I wonder to what extent in this instance it is driven by the EU regulating (mostly) foreign companies rather than (mostly) domestic ones.

Said differently, it is much easier for the EU to be impartial and competent when regulating Apple or Samsung than when regulating Volkswagen or Stellantis...
Xixi
·4 months ago·discuss
I'm not sure I'd put it down entirely to Osaka versus Kyoto. My impression is that these things often have at least as much to do with upbringing, formality, and social background as with region.

I don't know where you're from, so apologies if this is an unfair assumption, but in countries like the US or Australia people often seem less attuned to social class, whereas in places like the UK, France, and indeed Japan, those distinctions can carry more weight, even if they almost always go unspoken.
Xixi
·4 months ago·discuss
But what if there's not enough diesel?

That's what at stake here, with oil exports from the Middle East dwindling... Oil price might not even go up that much, or for that long, if the economy crashes hard enough.
Xixi
·6 months ago·discuss
I’m building something similar for Japan: https://altstack.jp. Still work in progress!
Xixi
·7 months ago·discuss
Steward-ownership is a philosophy more than an actual structure, my understanding is that each such company is in practice structured somewhat differently.

This article explains roughly how Patagonia is structured: https://medium.com/@purpose_network/the-patagonia-structure-...

For Patagonia a trust owns 100% of the voting rights, while a charity collects 100% of the dividends. I don't doubt that there are ways the structure could be subverted, but it's a far cry from "money without oversight".

Do you have examples of Steward-owned companies that ended up with "well, we might as well spend the extra profits on executive benefits"-issues?

(I personally think Steam should go in that direction, otherwise I'm afraid enshittification is unavoidable once Gabe Newell is no longer at the helm)
Xixi
·7 months ago·discuss
There's a little known alternative: Steward-ownership [1]. It's the kind of structure used by Novo Nordisk, Bosch or Patagonia.

LLM summary: "Steward-ownership is a model where a company’s control stays with long-term stewards (founders, employees, or a mission-aligned foundation) while profits are limited and the company cannot be sold for private gain. The goal is to protect the mission permanently."

The key, if I understand properly, is that these company cannot be sold (not even by the founders), so there is no "shareholder value" per se to maximize. It is also probably not a good way for founders to maximize their net worth, which is probably why it's not more popular...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steward-ownership
Xixi
·8 months ago·discuss
NASA once offered the UK to launch its satellites almost for free. That offer was rescinded as soon as the UK abandoned its national space program. [1]

From a European perspective, it’s impossible to look at the current situation and believe it would be the same without Ariane 6, even if Ariane 6 itself isn’t particularly competitive. Sovereign access to space is invaluable. Once you lose it, you hand an extraordinary amount of leverage to the White House. And make no mistake: that leverage will be used, whatever the color of the administration.

[1] https://curious-droid.com/323/black-arrow-lipstick-rocket-br...
Xixi
·8 months ago·discuss
I agree with your sentiment, but let's not rewrite history too much. Snow Leopard didn't have any new feature, but under the hood it was a massive undertaking IIRC: it introduced a 64-bit kernel and 64-bit system applications like Finder, Mail, Safari, etc. It also replaced many 32-bit system frameworks. Until Snow Leopard MacOS X was still mostly 32 bits.

When Snow Leopard came out it was very buggy, and many apps simply did not run on it. I've been a Mac user since 1993, and I think it's the only version of macOS I ever downgraded from. Don't get me wrong, it eventually became rock solid, the apps I needed were eventually upgraded, and it became a great OS.

But let's not mistake MacOS 10.6.8 for MacOS 10.6.0. And maybe let's not compare macOS 26.0 to MacOS 10.6.8 either, it's not quite fair. Ever since Snow Leopard I've been waiting at least 6 months before upgrading macOS. I don't intend to change that rule anytime soon...
Xixi
·9 months ago·discuss
Sarkozy was not the only one sentenced to jail in that trial: Claude Guéant and Brice Hortefeux were also convicted, receiving sentences of six years and two years, respectively.

And then there are the many other trials involving Sarkozy and those around him...
Xixi
·10 years ago·discuss
The PS4 doesn't run on a battery though, so if they can get roughly the same power with a much lower power consumption it's already really good.